Lifestyles - Food

Barney Flats Oatmeal Stout: Try new things

When it comes time to harvest more beers for the fridge, sometimes the choice can be daunting.

For many, it's easiest to reach for the tried-and-true 12-pack of Coors and consider yourself good for the week (or month, or Friday – I don't judge).But what if you want to branch out? How can you justify spending $10 on a six-pack when you've never heard of the beer, brewery or both?

My usual approach is to find a type of beer I like, dive into it and hope for the best. But a smarter, cheaper, more common sense option would be to buy one beer instead of a six- or 12-pack.

Most liquor stores offer the option of buying a single beer, but I usually go for the mix-six pack if it's offered – finding six offerings from the same brewery or style, or just picking the ones with the prettiest labels. As an added bonus, some liquor stores offer a discount for buying six beers instead of one or two.

The results (surprise!) have been mixed. But some beers offer pleasant, even mind-blowing results.

As was the case two weeks ago, when I picked up a handful of brews from Anderson Valley Brewing out of Boonville, Calif.

Advertisement

The first beer I picked was Barney Flats Oatmeal Stout, which immediately made me suspicious on a multiple levels. First, the can is an ugly algae green with a silhouette of a half bear/half elk beast on the front. Second, the top rim says “Bahl hornin' since 1987,” which sounds like some kind of pigeon English. Third, there was no “best by” or “brewed on” date on the can.

I couldn't find an explanation for the bear/elk beast or the date of the beer, but “Bahl hornin',” it turns out, comes from an old language called Boontling invented in the region. (PLEASE check it out at http://www.avbc.com/main/.)

Since the language's speakers are aging, it appears the brewery is trying to revive it for a younger generation. You can't make this stuff up.

Oh, and the beer was one of the best stouts I've ever had.

Anderson Valley Brewing's Barney Flats Oatmeal Stout:

Sight: It's completely black with a big, mocha-colored head that fades relatively quickly. Slosh it around and it's easy to see that it's viscous – kind of like motor oil.

Taste: It's thick, with a little bit of smooth roast zeese throughout (that means “coffee” in Boontling). There are no charry, bitter or otherwise off-putting flavors at any point – just a quasi-chocolate, quasi-roasty mouth blanket that warms like a pot of Irish coffee on the way down.

I give it a 95. Could more layers have made this a better beer? Maybe. But as it is, Barney Flats accomplishes things some aged or big-alcohol stouts don't touch.

It looks like motor oil, but smells like dessert. It coats the mouth with rich, smooth, subtle stout flavors and warms the belly at the end. The only bitterness it leaves is the bitterness that the last sip is gone.

In a way it's dangerous, because learning to trust a beer that looks so dark and foreboding could lead to some serious disappointments in the future. It's probably best to seek it out, enjoy it and hope any other mix-six beer you find is half as interesting.